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This article is fascinating. But what's on display here is less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI - instead we get to see so

This article is fascinating. But what's on display here is less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI - instead we get to see something much more specific: a behind-the-scenes of how those endless chill/lo-fi/ambient playlists get created. Which is something I've always wondered! How does the Lofi Girl channel on Youtube always have so much new music from artists I have never heard from? The answer is surprising: real people and real instruments! (At least at the time of writing). Third-party stock music ("muzak") companies hiring underemployed jazz musicians to crank out a few dozen derivative songs every day to hack the algorithm. > “Honestly, for most of this stuff, I just write out charts while lying on my back on the couch,” he explained. “And then once we have a critical mass, they organize a session and we play them. And it’s usually just like, one take, one take, one take, one take. You knock out like fifteen in an hour or two.” With the jazz musician’s particular group, the session typically includes a pianist, a bassist, and a drummer. An engineer from the studio will be there, and usually someone from the PFC partner company will come along, too—acting as a producer, giving light feedback, at times inching the musicians in a more playlist-friendly direction.” I think there's an easy and obvious thing we can do - stop listening to playlists! Seek out named jazz artists. Listen to your local jazz station. Go to jazz shows.

CocaKoala 2y ago
Ah, see, my experience is exactly the opposite of yours; I don't listen to the ChilledCow streams, but I do listen to the Chillhop playlists (and in fact purchase the seasonal essentials collections on vinyl) and one of the reasons I like them is because there's a lot of curation that goes into the playlist and they tend to feature artists that I end up liking - Blue Wednesday, Purple Cat, Joey Pecararo are all reliable artists in the genre for me.
- nicky0 2y ago
  I like how you called it ChilledCow to show how OG you are.
Gigachad 2y ago
I’m not even mad about it. It’s background music and clearly people are enjoying it. Just because they smashed out 15 tracks in a single session doesn’t make it unfit for purpose. That’s just how Jazz music is.
- wbl 2y ago
  Kenny G might deserve your comment. But Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus...
  - orblivion 2y ago
    I think some people may have a misunderstanding about what jazz is. I know one friend of mine did. Some jazz may be easy listening, but it's not made for easy listening, it's made to bend the boundaries of music theory. And also a lot of "easy listening" that sounds like jazz isn't really jazz.
    - vasco 2y ago
      So what is jazz
      - gvurrdon 2y ago
        The term covers a variety of styles, with old ones hanging around as new ground is broken. Perhaps it is a "meta-genre". There are various articles around explaining its history which might be worth looking at, if you're interested. I'd expect to hear some degree of improvisation in jazz, but not in easy listening.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
        The devils music.
      - YagoTheFrood 2y ago
        "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." Apocryphal quote by Louis Armstrong.
chrisweekly 2y ago
Interesting take. For my part, I'm grateful for Spotify's "exclude from taste profile" feature. This lets me leverage my personally-curated "Flowstate" playlist ^1 for hours at a time while I'm working -- tracks that I've hand-picked to facilitate a "getting things done" mindset / energized mood / creativity or go-time vibe, and can stand to listen to on repeat -- without "polluting" my regular music preferences. It's apples and oranges, mostly - there's music I want to listen and attend to (as a guitar player and lifelong avid music listener across many genres including "serious" jazz), and there's audio (which could as easily be programmatically generated / binaural beats, whatever -- eg brain.fm) that I use as a tool specifically to help shape my cognitive state for focus / productivity. I think it's kind of funny how some people get confused about the fact that there are many reasons to listen to many kinds of music. When it comes to music discovery on Spotify, the "go to radio" option from a given track or album is a reliable way to surface new-to-me things. I usually prefer this proactive seeking to the playlists spotify's algo generates for me. (shrug) 1. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA?si=z0Js7SwBRFm6hmm_GFUNnA&pi=u-2oSesOIRQhW0 https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA?si=...
- dmonitor 2y ago
  > For my part, I'm grateful for Spotify's "exclude from taste profile" feature This is my first time being made aware of this. Fantastic option that more websites should adopt
  - klabetron 2y ago
    Anyone know if YouTube has it? The number of times I switch the YouTube app to Incognito just to avoid whatever links my friends send from influencing my recommendations…
    - zxcvbnm69 2y ago
      [dead]
    - m5l 2y ago
      Removing videos from my watch history seems to work for this. The note on this page[1] seems to indicate that watch history is what's driving your recommendations (they disappear if you don't have enough history): [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725
sitkack 2y ago
> is less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI Has that been shown?
- mort96 2y ago
  It hasn't been shown that Spotify has no nefarious plan to replace Katy Perry with AI, but what's on display here, what this article is highlighting, is no such thing.
Balgair 2y ago
Check out Chillhop ( https://chillhop.com/radio/ https://chillhop.com/radio/). Great little lofi studio out of Rotterdam. Good to the artists, from what I can tell. Psalm Trees, an artist with them, just put out an interesting little 'double'-ish album here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmL9LvTYjMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmL9LvTYjMQ He produced a whole jazz album just so he could sample from it for a lofi album. Absolutely mental workload. There's a lot of crap in lofi, but also some real 'bangers' too : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3yBo2szD8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3yBo2szD8 (yes, really, 10 hours of great work, IMHO)
- xrd 2y ago
  I want to know how you found this. Why do you say they are good to the artists? I would love to know how you cultivate your feed and from where you get your music information?
- fakedang 2y ago
  Psalm Trees is my jam! The song "Fever" got me into lofi music.
eleveriven 2y ago
It’s ironic, though, that what we love about playlists like Lofi Girl (endless streams of music that feel fresh yet familiar) is exactly what’s being exploited
- fuhsnn 2y ago
  >feel fresh yet familiar This probably applies to most mainstream entertainment.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    In this particular context, it's for passive entertainment; things like blockbuster movies are intended for actively watching. But that said, people massively underestimate the background entertainment market. Spotify Reddit is that for me a lot of the time, as is youtube. Netflix and co less so, if I'm watching something I want to enjoy it, not have it as background / comofort stuff.
  - eleveriven 2y ago
    What’s interesting (and ironic) here is how that formula is being industrialized to an extreme in the case of platforms like Spotify
rich_sasha 2y ago
I agree 100%. I think the question is, what when inevitably someone uses that human music to train an AI generating the same ambient music? Especially when you acquired the music on the cheap using a monopoly position.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  I assumed that has already been happening. I see tons of all capital letter 5 or 6 letter “artists” in Apple Music infinite playlist. There are also websites and apps like Suno that make whatever you want on the fly.
yellow_lead 2y ago
> Which is something I've always wondered! How does the Lofi Girl channel on Youtube always have so much new music from artists I have never heard from? > The answer is surprising: real people and real instruments! (At least at the time of writing). Sorry to break it to you, but there's actually tones of AI lofi music from Suno all over YouTube right now. See this video for an explanation: https://youtu.be/_oxtFP2UUyM https://youtu.be/_oxtFP2UUyM And here are some examples of the content: https://youtu.be/RJUvNVCqtpI https://youtu.be/RJUvNVCqtpI https://youtu.be/iBt051Pq7_4 https://youtu.be/iBt051Pq7_4
- liminalsunset 2y ago
  The YouTube link that starts with RJUvNV, titled "(a). sip" IMO, the first track is a banger (I really like it), and it doesn't sound obviously AI. The second track is more obviously AI, mostly due to the high frequency "dullness". Likewise, the second link iBT051 seems to have the same issue, it's low fidelity (but in a different way than the lo-fi style is).
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI actually, it's the same nefarious plan, just that AI wasn't yet up to the task. Now it is, and replacing those fake artists, who are still human beings as far as we know, with AI (and the same fake resumes) is the logical next step.
- motorest 2y ago
  > Now it is, and replacing those fake artists (...) They aren't even artists. They release content bought from third-parties, and at most their role is limited to market it. These "artists" are at best brands that are carefully managed and curated.
- yojo 2y ago
  To your point, the article even mentions that since the Muzak labels own the master on all these tracks, they are free to use them however they see fit. Which in this case probably means training their AI entirely on their own cleanly licensed music. They are probably already doing it, slipping in a few AI-generated songs in with the gig-produced music to see how it’s performing.
legohead 2y ago
There is an incredible amount of unique music & artists on Soundcloud. Or at least there was some years ago. I got quite into it, to where it was taking up too much of my time and I stopped using it altogether. They kept making it more difficult to download music too so that was another thing that drove me away.
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  I tried soundcloud recently and it’s filled with ads to the point of being an extremely disruptive experience.
lubujackson 2y ago
Alternative take - this might not actually be the worst thing for musicians, to have a low effort, steady paying gig creating music. I am reminded of the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" about the "Funk Brothers", which was an amorphous group of jazz musicians who did all of the backing tracks for most of the 100s of Motown hits. Obviously, making ambient tracks is not quite the same as writing "Please Mr. Postman" and hearing your songs on the radio, but in the documentary the band talked about how they'd pump out songs during the day then go to a jazz club at night to make the music they REALLY wanted to make.
- motorest 2y ago
  > Alternative take - this might not actually be the worst thing for musicians, to have a low effort, steady paying gig creating music. I think this is a red herring to try to convince people that it's in their best interests to be force-fed content produced by major labels behind the brand {INSERT_ARTIST_NAME}. Which incidentally it's the business model from major labels. I mean, check any major labels artist. Each and every single hit song they release has countless writers and producers claiming a stake, not to mention the fact that some major labels artists don't even try to hide the fact they buy all their content from third-parties to slap their name over it. Is this the state of affairs that's being defended? Give me a procedurally-generated playlist that I can listen all day long, and skip the content I'm not interested in.
  - tuna74 2y ago
    "I mean, check any major labels artist. Each and every single hit song they release has countless writers and producers claiming a stake, not to mention the fact that some major labels artists don't even try to hide the fact they buy all their content from third-parties to slap their name over it." Do you think this is a bad thing?
    - jfengel 2y ago
      It's too bad that stardom still generally requires being promoted by one of a handful of corporations. It's not impossible to get there without them, but the result is that we still end up concentrating most of the wealth on a tiny number of artists, while a vast number of equal talents go under-used and under-compensated.
magic_hamster 2y ago
Only on your last sentence did I realize you were describing something you thought was actually bad. In my opinion it's a pretty good system where everybody wins: the audience gets real, fresh music, the players get paid for some practice sessions with low pressure (sounds like fun), and the producers make some money. This is a pretty good expression of music as a service in my opinion.
- chrz 2y ago
  Oh look spotify is here. From article it wasnt "sounds like fun" but "horrible expierience"
kiba 2y ago
I think there's an easy and obvious thing we can do - stop listening to playlists! Seek out named jazz artists. Listen to your local jazz station. Go to jazz shows. Not a musician myself, but I am a live performer. I think live performance will come back into stride for things people do. Then again, people do livestreaming all the time, but it's a different sort of entertainment compared to people putting up a live show for you for a lack of better term. I am hoping to do it next year.
- jfengel 2y ago
  I'm in theater, which is challenging because we do things comparable to TV and movies, but with significant physical constraints. And costs constraints, unless you're doing a Broadway musical for which ticket prices are well over $100. Yet people still come to my shows. I have to charge more than I want to, simply as a matter of real estate. People do still want what we can bring them live. I could not conceivably make a living at it, but there is still value in doing the work and bringing it to people. Maybe AI will demotivate people from screens. I haven't seen a flood yet, to be sure, but we'll see.
bondarchuk 2y ago
I'm just pleasantly surprised that this stuff is played by humans at all. Maybe in 20 years we'll see some "best of mid-2020's streaming muzak" compilations pressed on expensive vinyl, like we got with the library music of yore not that long ago.
- wsintra2022 2y ago
  If your looking for an early community that wants to press vinyl and create an online community, check out kushtybuckrecords, it’s a project me and my son are building, we have friends that own a vinyl press factory (Press On) and we are trying to build an online community that will help Artist create vinyl records

CocaKoala 2y ago

Ah, see, my experience is exactly the opposite of yours; I don't listen to the ChilledCow streams, but I do listen to the Chillhop playlists (and in fact purchase the seasonal essentials collections on vinyl) and one of the reasons I like them is because there's a lot of curation that goes into the playlist and they tend to feature artists that I end up liking - Blue Wednesday, Purple Cat, Joey Pecararo are all reliable artists in the genre for me.

nicky0 2y ago
I like how you called it ChilledCow to show how OG you are.

Gigachad 2y ago

I’m not even mad about it. It’s background music and clearly people are enjoying it. Just because they smashed out 15 tracks in a single session doesn’t make it unfit for purpose. That’s just how Jazz music is.

wbl 2y ago
Kenny G might deserve your comment. But Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus...
- orblivion 2y ago
  I think some people may have a misunderstanding about what jazz is. I know one friend of mine did. Some jazz may be easy listening, but it's not made for easy listening, it's made to bend the boundaries of music theory. And also a lot of "easy listening" that sounds like jazz isn't really jazz.
  - vasco 2y ago
    So what is jazz
    - gvurrdon 2y ago
      The term covers a variety of styles, with old ones hanging around as new ground is broken. Perhaps it is a "meta-genre". There are various articles around explaining its history which might be worth looking at, if you're interested. I'd expect to hear some degree of improvisation in jazz, but not in easy listening.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
      The devils music.
    - YagoTheFrood 2y ago
      "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." Apocryphal quote by Louis Armstrong.

chrisweekly 2y ago

Interesting take. For my part, I'm grateful for Spotify's "exclude from taste profile" feature. This lets me leverage my personally-curated "Flowstate" playlist ^1 for hours at a time while I'm working -- tracks that I've hand-picked to facilitate a "getting things done" mindset / energized mood / creativity or go-time vibe, and can stand to listen to on repeat -- without "polluting" my regular music preferences. It's apples and oranges, mostly - there's music I want to listen and attend to (as a guitar player and lifelong avid music listener across many genres including "serious" jazz), and there's audio (which could as easily be programmatically generated / binaural beats, whatever -- eg brain.fm) that I use as a tool specifically to help shape my cognitive state for focus / productivity. I think it's kind of funny how some people get confused about the fact that there are many reasons to listen to many kinds of music. When it comes to music discovery on Spotify, the "go to radio" option from a given track or album is a reliable way to surface new-to-me things. I usually prefer this proactive seeking to the playlists spotify's algo generates for me. (shrug) 1. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA?si=z0Js7SwBRFm6hmm_GFUNnA&pi=u-2oSesOIRQhW0 https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA?si=...

dmonitor 2y ago
> For my part, I'm grateful for Spotify's "exclude from taste profile" feature This is my first time being made aware of this. Fantastic option that more websites should adopt
- klabetron 2y ago
  Anyone know if YouTube has it? The number of times I switch the YouTube app to Incognito just to avoid whatever links my friends send from influencing my recommendations…
  - zxcvbnm69 2y ago
    [dead]
  - m5l 2y ago
    Removing videos from my watch history seems to work for this. The note on this page[1] seems to indicate that watch history is what's driving your recommendations (they disappear if you don't have enough history): [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725

sitkack 2y ago

> is less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI Has that been shown?

mort96 2y ago
It hasn't been shown that Spotify has no nefarious plan to replace Katy Perry with AI, but what's on display here, what this article is highlighting, is no such thing.

Balgair 2y ago

Check out Chillhop ( https://chillhop.com/radio/ https://chillhop.com/radio/). Great little lofi studio out of Rotterdam. Good to the artists, from what I can tell. Psalm Trees, an artist with them, just put out an interesting little 'double'-ish album here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmL9LvTYjMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmL9LvTYjMQ He produced a whole jazz album just so he could sample from it for a lofi album. Absolutely mental workload. There's a lot of crap in lofi, but also some real 'bangers' too : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3yBo2szD8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3yBo2szD8 (yes, really, 10 hours of great work, IMHO)

xrd 2y ago
I want to know how you found this. Why do you say they are good to the artists? I would love to know how you cultivate your feed and from where you get your music information?
fakedang 2y ago
Psalm Trees is my jam! The song "Fever" got me into lofi music.

eleveriven 2y ago

It’s ironic, though, that what we love about playlists like Lofi Girl (endless streams of music that feel fresh yet familiar) is exactly what’s being exploited

fuhsnn 2y ago
>feel fresh yet familiar This probably applies to most mainstream entertainment.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  In this particular context, it's for passive entertainment; things like blockbuster movies are intended for actively watching. But that said, people massively underestimate the background entertainment market. Spotify Reddit is that for me a lot of the time, as is youtube. Netflix and co less so, if I'm watching something I want to enjoy it, not have it as background / comofort stuff.
- eleveriven 2y ago
  What’s interesting (and ironic) here is how that formula is being industrialized to an extreme in the case of platforms like Spotify

rich_sasha 2y ago

I agree 100%. I think the question is, what when inevitably someone uses that human music to train an AI generating the same ambient music? Especially when you acquired the music on the cheap using a monopoly position.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
I assumed that has already been happening. I see tons of all capital letter 5 or 6 letter “artists” in Apple Music infinite playlist. There are also websites and apps like Suno that make whatever you want on the fly.

yellow_lead 2y ago

> Which is something I've always wondered! How does the Lofi Girl channel on Youtube always have so much new music from artists I have never heard from? > The answer is surprising: real people and real instruments! (At least at the time of writing). Sorry to break it to you, but there's actually tones of AI lofi music from Suno all over YouTube right now. See this video for an explanation: https://youtu.be/_oxtFP2UUyM https://youtu.be/_oxtFP2UUyM And here are some examples of the content: https://youtu.be/RJUvNVCqtpI https://youtu.be/RJUvNVCqtpI https://youtu.be/iBt051Pq7_4 https://youtu.be/iBt051Pq7_4

liminalsunset 2y ago
The YouTube link that starts with RJUvNV, titled "(a). sip" IMO, the first track is a banger (I really like it), and it doesn't sound obviously AI. The second track is more obviously AI, mostly due to the high frequency "dullness". Likewise, the second link iBT051 seems to have the same issue, it's low fidelity (but in a different way than the lo-fi style is).

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI actually, it's the same nefarious plan, just that AI wasn't yet up to the task. Now it is, and replacing those fake artists, who are still human beings as far as we know, with AI (and the same fake resumes) is the logical next step.

motorest 2y ago
> Now it is, and replacing those fake artists (...) They aren't even artists. They release content bought from third-parties, and at most their role is limited to market it. These "artists" are at best brands that are carefully managed and curated.
yojo 2y ago
To your point, the article even mentions that since the Muzak labels own the master on all these tracks, they are free to use them however they see fit. Which in this case probably means training their AI entirely on their own cleanly licensed music. They are probably already doing it, slipping in a few AI-generated songs in with the gig-produced music to see how it’s performing.

legohead 2y ago

There is an incredible amount of unique music & artists on Soundcloud. Or at least there was some years ago. I got quite into it, to where it was taking up too much of my time and I stopped using it altogether. They kept making it more difficult to download music too so that was another thing that drove me away.

onemoresoop 2y ago
I tried soundcloud recently and it’s filled with ads to the point of being an extremely disruptive experience.

lubujackson 2y ago

Alternative take - this might not actually be the worst thing for musicians, to have a low effort, steady paying gig creating music. I am reminded of the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" about the "Funk Brothers", which was an amorphous group of jazz musicians who did all of the backing tracks for most of the 100s of Motown hits. Obviously, making ambient tracks is not quite the same as writing "Please Mr. Postman" and hearing your songs on the radio, but in the documentary the band talked about how they'd pump out songs during the day then go to a jazz club at night to make the music they REALLY wanted to make.

motorest 2y ago
> Alternative take - this might not actually be the worst thing for musicians, to have a low effort, steady paying gig creating music. I think this is a red herring to try to convince people that it's in their best interests to be force-fed content produced by major labels behind the brand {INSERT_ARTIST_NAME}. Which incidentally it's the business model from major labels. I mean, check any major labels artist. Each and every single hit song they release has countless writers and producers claiming a stake, not to mention the fact that some major labels artists don't even try to hide the fact they buy all their content from third-parties to slap their name over it. Is this the state of affairs that's being defended? Give me a procedurally-generated playlist that I can listen all day long, and skip the content I'm not interested in.
- tuna74 2y ago
  "I mean, check any major labels artist. Each and every single hit song they release has countless writers and producers claiming a stake, not to mention the fact that some major labels artists don't even try to hide the fact they buy all their content from third-parties to slap their name over it." Do you think this is a bad thing?
  - jfengel 2y ago
    It's too bad that stardom still generally requires being promoted by one of a handful of corporations. It's not impossible to get there without them, but the result is that we still end up concentrating most of the wealth on a tiny number of artists, while a vast number of equal talents go under-used and under-compensated.

magic_hamster 2y ago

Only on your last sentence did I realize you were describing something you thought was actually bad. In my opinion it's a pretty good system where everybody wins: the audience gets real, fresh music, the players get paid for some practice sessions with low pressure (sounds like fun), and the producers make some money. This is a pretty good expression of music as a service in my opinion.

chrz 2y ago
Oh look spotify is here. From article it wasnt "sounds like fun" but "horrible expierience"

kiba 2y ago

I think there's an easy and obvious thing we can do - stop listening to playlists! Seek out named jazz artists. Listen to your local jazz station. Go to jazz shows. Not a musician myself, but I am a live performer. I think live performance will come back into stride for things people do. Then again, people do livestreaming all the time, but it's a different sort of entertainment compared to people putting up a live show for you for a lack of better term. I am hoping to do it next year.

jfengel 2y ago
I'm in theater, which is challenging because we do things comparable to TV and movies, but with significant physical constraints. And costs constraints, unless you're doing a Broadway musical for which ticket prices are well over $100. Yet people still come to my shows. I have to charge more than I want to, simply as a matter of real estate. People do still want what we can bring them live. I could not conceivably make a living at it, but there is still value in doing the work and bringing it to people. Maybe AI will demotivate people from screens. I haven't seen a flood yet, to be sure, but we'll see.

bondarchuk 2y ago

I'm just pleasantly surprised that this stuff is played by humans at all. Maybe in 20 years we'll see some "best of mid-2020's streaming muzak" compilations pressed on expensive vinyl, like we got with the library music of yore not that long ago.

wsintra2022 2y ago
If your looking for an early community that wants to press vinyl and create an online community, check out kushtybuckrecords, it’s a project me and my son are building, we have friends that own a vinyl press factory (Press On) and we are trying to build an online community that will help Artist create vinyl records